Tea Partiers' Irrational Obsession With Anti-Taxation and Anti-Immigration

If you aren't exactly sure what the United States tea party movement is about, this anonymous Arizona resident sums it up very well, as she told Ken Silverstein earlier this year:

"People who have swimming pools don’t need state parks. If you buy your books at Borders you don’t need libraries. If your kids are in private school, you don’t need K–12. The people here, or at least those who vote, don’t see the need for government. Since a lot of the population are not citizens, the message is that government exists to help the undeserving, so we shouldn’t have it at all. People think it’s OK to cut spending, because ESL is about people who refuse to assimilate and health care pays for illegals."

This is particularly important to remember today, as citizens here in elected new US senators such as Rand Paul in Kentucky (my state of residence) and Marco Rubio in Florida.  Silverstein observes the scenario in Arizona, very similar to ours here and in many others states:

"the state’s electoral system, which rewards extreme right-wing rhetoric, has allowed the political class to be as irresponsible and reckless as it likes. State residents seem content to cheer on the legislature for lowering their taxes—even as massive budget cuts pack their children into classrooms with more and more students, or force them to stand in line for a day to renew driver’s licenses at the gutted Department of Motor Vehicles. Arizonans will complain about their legislature—one recent poll showed that just 15 percent thought state lawmakers’ performance was “good”—but keep sending ever more radical Republicans to office. It is much like the Tea Party nationwide, which will, quite sensibly, demand political reform and protest the bank bailout, even as it backs hacks like Hayworth who represent the most corrupt wing of the G.O.P. "